Nutrient Dosing Framework for an Emission-Free Urban Hydroponic Production

Abstract

The urban hydroponic production system is accelerating industrialization in step with the potentials for reducing environmental impact. In contrast, establishing sustainable fertilizer dosing techniques still lags behind the pace of expansion of the system. The reproducibility of root-zone nutrient dynamics in the system is poorly understood, and managing nutrients has so far primarily relied on periodic discharge or dumping of highly concentrated nutrient solutions. Here, we assayed root-zone nutrient concentration changes using three possible nutrient dosing types. Three Brassica species were hydroponically cultivated in a controlled environment to apply the nutrient absorption and transpiration parameters to the simulation analysis. We found that nutrient dosing based on total ion concentration could provide more reproducible root-zone nutrient dynamics. Our findings highlight the nutrient absorption parameter domain in management practice. This simplifies conventional nutrient management into an optimization problem. Collectively, our framework can be extended to fertilizer-emission-free urban hydroponic production.